Friday, August 3, 2012

Suhag A. Shukla is a Hindu woman who is the Co-Founder/Managing Director, Hindu American Foundation.

Below is an excerpt from her article on Christian evangelism in Indian entitled The Question Of Evangelism In India:

The evangelical Joshua Project -- is just one example of what India, at the heart of the 10-40 Window, is facing. The Joshua Project is an information powerhouse -- detailing logistical information about people groups around the world, and providing ideas to Evangelicals committed to mass church-planting, and in turn conversions, among every ethnic group. The data is meticulous and well-researched, and both shocking and disturbing.

The Joshua Project lists the percentage of unreached in India as 93.3% -- that's basically every Indian Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist. Last-name, clan, caste, or tribe-based communities are catalogued according to location, religious affiliation, language, and population -- the data collection puts the postal systems of most developed nations to shame. Technical acronyms such as CPI, or Church Planting Indicator, with a ranking system of 0 to 5, measure the progress of church growth based on churches established and number of "believers" regularly attending. Then there's the progress scale which allows the "Saved" to track, well ... "progress" of the "Harvest" -- red indicating less than 2% Evangelical and less than 5% Christian, yellow indicating less than 2% Evangelical but greater than 5% Christian, and green indicating from 2% to greater than 5% Evangelical. And of course, what worldwide project of this scale and in this century would be complete without an iPhone App?

Question: What global effort of atheism evangelism has ever been described using the words "meticulous", "well-researched" and "information powerhouse" by non-atheists? I haven't seen any. In fact, I haven't seen any atheists describe their own efforts of global evangelism this way.

The Bible calls atheists fools. Is it a big surprise that in our information age that global atheism is shrinking in adherents and has ineffective global outreach efforts? Why have such self-described geniuses in the physical and social sciences failing so miserably when it comes to evangelism? Could it be that they often have inflated notions of their competence and wisdom? Moreover, how long do evolutionists think they can keep the lies of evolution safe from criticism at a time when Christians are pouring into internet evangelism with great fervor? See: Internet evangelism is powerful especially when combined with creationism evangelism

Of course, in an age of globalization and global communication where the actions and ideas of countries often affect each other, this is indictment of a group which pridefully confers upon itself labels such as freethinkers, rationalists, objectivists, Brights and humanists. Also, militant atheists have long voiced that Christianity and all religions are evil and/or wrongheaded and need to disappear.

Why do atheists and agnostics have such a poor global evangelism model?

Vox Day, who wrote the bookIrrational atheists, has long maintained that most atheism is purely chosen for emotional reasons. In addition, he maintains that most atheists are ill-informed about the various arguments and evidence for Christianity and for theism.

As for the PZ Myers Memorial Debate, we are still in search of an atheist to champion the argument that the logic and evidence for the nonexistence of gods is stronger than the logic and evidence for the existence of gods. It is certainly informative to see how many atheists do not appear to believe they are able to effectively make this case; in light of this, many Christians may find this to be a useful tactical approach when confronted by aggressive atheists in the future. This tends to confirm my previous observations that while atheists like to challenge the beliefs of others, they are very ill-prepared, and in many cases downright unwilling, to defend their own. So, if you want to shut them up, simply go on the attack. They'll run away with alacrity.

Dr. Paul Vitz found that most prominent atheists had poor and/or non-existent relationships with their fathers. Vox Day wrote concerning atheists: "And every childhood deconvert I have ever questioned has simply had Daddy issues of one sort or another. You can usually identify the latter sort by their emotional reactions to religion."

In addition, many atheists such as Dan Barker have chaffed under Christian morality and instead advocated moral relativism. The late Christopher Hitchens in his debate with William Lane Craig was asked twice during the audience question period to condemn bestiality and he refused to do it.

Accordingly, it should not surprise anyone that atheist evangelism is lackluster in its current performance. Why would the atheist religion which is largely based on emotionalism and rebellion have a well-designed and implemented atheism evangelism effort? Atheism and its ideological cousin, lack proof and evidence that they are true and so we should not expect atheists and agnostics to have a robust model of evangelism based on data and research.

I encourage you to read this collection of articles to see the ineptness of atheism evangelism and leadership plus the denialism among the atheist community that global atheism and global agnosticism populations are shrinking:

Next, I will admit that atheists and agnostics have obtained leadership positions within education and mass media in the Western World and promoted atheism, agnosticism and evolutionism via these venues. In addition, their allies political liberals have leadership within government. But state atheism has never been very effective over the long term (It certainly was not effective in the countries of the former Soviet Union) and has contributed to atheists being among the most hated groups in North America. Many parents resent atheists and evolutionists trying to indoctrinate their own children and the children of others. Presently, atheists and evolutionists are terrified about theologically conservative Bible clubs making great inroad into public schools via equal access laws which allow parents to voluntarily enroll their children in Bible classes which meet in public schools.

In addition, with secular Europe financially disintegrating and with America laden with 15 trillion dollars of debt caused largely through the profligate spending of liberals and moderates and not religious and fiscal conservatives, when the upcoming financial crises hit, that is not going to bode very well for atheists, agnostics, evolutionists and liberals. In the Great Depression in America, theologically conservative churches grew (churches which focused on holiness and/or Pentecostal churches did well during this time).

Another important point to make is that denialists often deep down know they are living in self-deception so it should not surprise anyone that atheists and agnostics would not make heroic efforts to promote their nonsense.